The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about
the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her
state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not
service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was
made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things
which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I
never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt
Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she
is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book,
which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be
destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for
instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit
among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to.
Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left
in doubt.

IT was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom
I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things: his candid
simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the
restfulness of his company -- for he did all the talking. We fell
together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being
shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me.
As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift
away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era
and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about
me that I seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and
mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! Exactly as
I would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most
familiar neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir
Launcelot of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of the
Table Round -- and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and
musty and ancient he came to look as he went on!

I am Buffalo Bill's horse. I have spent my life under his saddle--
with him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his
clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out
on the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is
young, hasn't an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in
his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair
dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody
is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a
person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded
buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing
a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out
behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look
at then--and I'm part of it myself.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse. --Pudd'nhead
Wilson's New Calendar.

The starting point of this lecturing-trip
around the world was Paris, where we had been living a year or two.

We sailed for America, and there made
certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my
family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a
carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of place in a dictionary.

We started westward from New York in
midsummer, with Major Pond to manage the platform-business as far as the
Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last fortnight of it was
suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon and Columbia the forest fires were
raging. We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard, where we were
obliged awhile for our ship. She had been getting herself ashore in the
smoke, and she had to be docked and repaired.

In the ancient city of London, on a
certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy
was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On
the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name
of Tudor, who did want him. All England wanted him too. England had so
longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed God for him, that, now
that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy. Mere
acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. Everybody took a
holiday, and high and low, rich and poor, feasted and danced and sang,
and got very mellow; and they kept this up for days and nights together.
By day, London was a sight to see, with gay banners waving from every
balcony and housetop, and splendid pageants marching along. By night, it
was again a sight to see, with its great bonfires at every corner, and
its troops of revellers making merry around them. There was no talk in
all England but of the new baby, Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay
lapped in silks and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not
knowing that great lords and ladies were tending him and watching over
him--and not caring, either. But there was no talk about the other baby,
Tom Canty, lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers
whom he had just come to trouble with his presence.